Being Responsible: Case Study of Managing Performance and Change

This article presents the work experience of a General Manager of a plywood factory named Rusdi. The plywood factory is located in Kalimantan – Indonesia, where the raw material for production is obtained from timber plantations from industrial plantations, owned by the company. Rusdi was promoted to the position of General Manager of the factory after previously successfully managing the forestry sector that one of the raw material supplier to the factory from industrial forestry in an island near Borneo, Indonesia. During Rusdi’s position as General Manager of the forestry, the flow of raw material production was considered to be smoother and better quality, compared to the previous management period, which often encountered obstacles in the field / factory in the form of a crisis in the supply of raw materials for production, thus disrupting the production process. The opportunity that was obtained at the same time was a challenge for Rusdi because in the past five years, the company had suffered losses and the management demanded him to bring the company into profit without being given an injection of working capital. The revitalization that becomes main strategy is the efficiency of the company where there were 3,500 employees producing only 50% of total installed capacity. On the other hand, management’s policy to only manage raw materials from the owned forest itself becomes a challenge because it must control from upstream to downstream of production by not being able to buy raw materials from outside. As a result, the production team must anticipate the possibility of not being able to produce as the installed capacity due to the lack of raw materials. Cutting some of the numbers of production employees, then recruiting contract employees are one of several policy proposals from Rusdi implemented by management, in an effort to improve employee performance and production performance. This strategy caused turmoil in the field.